


Etchings

by PaperRevolution



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Art, Gen, Revolution, Writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:45:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperRevolution/pseuds/PaperRevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Vivent les peuples". Feuilly etches words into the wall of the Corinth and thinks about the legacy the revolutionaries might leave behind them, and his own lack of a personal legacy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Etchings

The wall is cold at his back. He is tired, and cannot sleep. On the floor nearby, he finds a dull grey nail, ringed with rust. Picking it up with the mechanical movements of a man exhausted, but with a curious deliberate expression, in the stone he etches out a letter:

V-

Painstaking; teeth snagging on the inside of his lower lip. What is the young man doing? He is leaving a mark for others to raise their eyes to and say “Look! What is that?” and think on it as they pass by.

-IV-

He blinks dust and tiredness from his eyes. He thinks of the people who are mired in fear; the people whose spirits are with them at the barricade, but cannot call forth in themselves the sort of desperate zeal to join them here. He is incensed by them and sorry for them, all at once. They are afraid, and human; that is all.

-ENT,

The voices of his friends are quiet in this brief lull; this period of supposed rest. Now he has begun, he is intent. If he could stand at a thousand barricades and fight, he would, he thinks. The great tragedy is that he cannot fight every fight. There are things he had meant to do in his life; he cannot. He must content himself with this, now.

L-

A voice for the voiceless; the undermined; the overlooked and forgotten and subjugated – he would have been this, had he more time. He would have tried to be like Enjolras; to find a way to make others stop and listen. But, unlike Enjolras, he would not have spoken with icy saturnine fierceness; with a curious hard, morose and joyous passion, but with something warmer. A moderate, inclusive voice; a far-reaching embrace.

-ES,

He shifts his grip. The nail bites into his fingers, staining them orange with rust. He pauses for a moment – only a moment, mind – and then goes on.

PE-

In the dimness, shapes gather, outlines illumed by faint yellow-orange candlelight. For a moment it appears to him as though they too are etched of stone; as though they are something ancient, organic; creatures of stone and will and stark brilliance.

-U-

He thinks, suddenly, at least I have no mother to cry for me; no father to shake his head in furious desolation for what he would surely call my folly. He wants to be glad of that, and in wanting, it is almost so, but there is something cold and heavy about knowing that you will leave nothing behind you when you go.

-PL-

He will leave things behind him. These words, he is etching so carefully now. Bits of spindle-linen-paper; creations for ladies to flutter for the sake of fashion. Careful, pointless objects. He smiles inexplicably. He has enjoyed making them, though. Perhaps he is being absurd. He thinks in pictures, brief and clear, and they rise now in his mind. A huge-eyed and gaunt-faced gamin whose desperate, gnawing hunger he remembers only too well. An old man, shaking with the cold. A girl, clutching the rags of her dress futilely to her chest. Yes, he is being absurd. Those are the lives to mourn; not his.

-ES.

That done, he stands back to look at his work. The letters are shaky in places, and some more deeply etched than others. But they are there, complete.

VIVENT LES PEUPLES.

Feuilly looks at what he has done with grave satisfaction. Words spoken can carry more fervour, it is true. But he knows too well from the books he has spent so many hours labouring over, that it is written words which have the true power. They outlast all else. Words spoken die on the instant after they are born. Words written often outlive their maker.

That, then, is his little legacy.


End file.
